In Defense of Obama’s Safe School Czar (Sort Of) – or I Was A Teenage ‘Lolito’

by Charles Winecoff

When I was 17 and desperate to get out of the house (and away from my parents), I wrote a crafty, fawning letter to a teacher whom I had admired from afar (a gay man 20 years my senior, who looked like a teddy bear), then sat back and waited.  It didn’t take long to get a response, a phone number, and then a meeting that I managed to turn into a date.  He thought I was very “mature” for my age.  I thought so too. 

kevin-jennings

As soon as I turned 18, I moved in with him.  (Note: he was not my first target; I had a terrible crush on my American History teacher in high school – another gay man – but he was partnered and I scared him off.)  Needless to say, we did not live happily ever after.

Married life brought out my true immaturity.  He was set in his ways, I had no discipline.  He liked dinner parties and lectures, I liked wearing silver lame’ pants to discos.  He had plenty of friends, gay and straight, some of whom he’d known since I was an infant.  They were very nice to me – but I was jealous of them all.  I threw tantrums.  “You love them more than you love me!”  (more…)